What Traitors Teaches Us About Our Personal Brand
What Traitors teaches us about our Personal Brand and why it might be getting you banished at the Round Table!
Who else is totally gripped with Traitors the TV series? We have been hooked as a family since season two!
In the castle, your survival depends on how you are perceived by others… one wrong look, inconsistent story or maybe your energy shifts slightly… and suddenly you are seen as suspicious!
Personal branding isn’t just a new marketing buzzword, it’s a survival strategy.
If you are an amazing business owner (a true, proud faithful!) but your online presence feels cold, confusing or inconsistent, potential clients could be scrolling past. They wont trust you enough to keep following your journey, to stick around long enough to decide to get in touch or to book with you.
As a personal branding photographer, my entire job is to make sure you don’t look ‘sus’!
Here is what Traitors teaches us –
The show offers many profound lessons on reputation management, how personal brands are built, maintained and destroyed!
Consistency is the ‘anti-sus’ shield – it looks suspicious if you are usually the loud, funny one and then suddenly go quiet. In business your audience/clients value your predictability – a shift in tone, values or behaviour can create a lack of trust.
Perception is the Only Reality – in the castle it doesn’t matter if you are actually a ‘faithful’ if you are being perceived as a ‘traitor’. Your brand is based on the stories that people tell about you when you are not in the room – if you don’t actively manage that narrative then others will write it for you.
The Power of Social Proof – this show highlights how easy it is to destroy a ‘brand’ with one influential voice. Herd mentality takes over! Once a narrative about a person or brand starts to gain traction, people stop thinking about facts and start looking for confirmation/proof. So make sure there is plenty of proof out there that you are the amazing business owner that you are!
High EQ trumps high IQ – the players that seem to last the longest aren’t always the smartest ones, or the best at missions. They are usually the ones who have the highest emotional intelligence. Successful players mirror the energy in the room, they listen more than they speak. If your brand is too poised and perfect it can be off putting or intimidating. A brand that is approachable and empathetic is more resilient.
The Authenticity Paradox – the show reveals that being 100% yourself can often be a double edged sword! It’s all about strategic authenticity – choosing which parts to show and which parts to dial down is also key in business. Your audience doesn’t necessarily need to know everything about you – only the things you want to share. Not what you ate for breakfast – unless you are in the health and wellness space! Share the things that are relevant to your ideal client, the things that will resonate with them and help them to know you and trust you.
I asked Gemini/ChatGPT to check my website and let me know if I was a Traitor or a Faithful! Such a fun exercise to do…
thankfully it came back with High Level Faithful! Highlighting that I come across as warm and the ‘person everyone wants to sit next to’ – the ultimate survival strategy! It also went onto say that I would be hard to ‘murder’ because my brand is rooted in personality. Which is exactly what I am aiming for (not being murdered obviously! but also to be fun and full of personality!)
However, I should confess, it did pick up on a few inconsistencies that I was able to go in and tweak. (Such as my contact email not matching my business name – rookie mistake).
Anyway, I highly recommend trying it (just maybe go and plant a tree afterwards!)
Category: Creative, Photography